Performance tweaks for WoW

[hid]

processAffinityMask
aka, preventing wow from running on the wrong cores.

Since patch 3.1, WoW has 3 main threads, as well as a number of smaller threads. By default wow either uses a mask of either 3, or a mask that uses all available cores, which usually means it's main threads run on the first 2/3 cores it encounters. In the case of a hyperthreading cpu like the i7, this means it tries to run the majority of wow on physical core 1 and virtual core 1 (which have overlapping parts due to hyperthreading), so core 2/3/4 won't be used much. Combined with the fact that core 1 is also used for all kinds of OS stuff, you can see that this is not nearly optimal.

(assuming a i7 2600K) Setting the processAffinityMask to 84 means that wow will run on physical cores 2, 3 and 4, while leaving physical core 1 and all virtual cores free to do other stuff. (and yes wow should take care of this but atm it doesnt )

Optimal settings from the mmo-guide:

Intel:
i7 Quad core with HT and you want to fraps - 252
i7 Quad core with HT - 84 or 252 (252 is more robust)
i5 Quad core which does not have HT - 14
i5 Dual core with HT - 5 (note - wow will default run over both available processors in dual core systems - no gain may be experienced)
Dual core with HT - 5 (note - wow will default run over both available processors in dual core systems - no gain may be experienced)
Dual core without HT - 3 (note - wow will default run over both available processors in dual core systems - no gain may be experienced)
I7 - Hex core (6 logical / 6 virtual) - 1344


AMD:
AMD tri core - 7
AMD quad core ( Phenom series ) - 14
AMD hex core - 56

You'll have to update/add this to the Config.wtf file in your WTF folder like this:

Code: [Select]

SET processAffinityMask "84"
Fancy graphic:



Latency
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html
Online games generally use the TCP protocol which requires that network segments sent to your computer be acknowledged in order to provide a reliable connection.

Windows bundles these acknowledgements together and sends them in pairs. While this is an efficient way of dealing with them generally, the inevitable delays caused by the bundling process increase latency considerably.

This is because when Windows queues up an acknowledgement in order to bundle it with the following one, the game server has to wait for the acknowledgement timer to expire before sending new data.

Leatrix Latency Fix removes the acknowledgement bundling process so that an acknowledgement is sent immediately for every segment that's received. This produces a significant reduction in latency as there is no longer a delay before new data is sent to your computer.

In a normal networking environment, you would prioritise network efficiency over latency and use the Windows defaults, but in online games the opposite is true and you want the lowest latency you can possibly get.

Graphics settings
Good ways to improve performance even more at the cost of some graphics:
- Lower shadows quality
- Don't go beyond 4x in-game multisampling
- Enable vertical synchronization
- Enable triple buffering
- Don't run in Windowed mode

Drive
You'll get the best performance running WoW from a SSD. If you don't have one, make sure the HDD it is on gets defragmented regularly.




Not sure if this has been posted somewhere already, my search didn't find anything similar so here u go

its quite nice to get some fps / latency boost in case u want to fraps and improve your fps

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

The part about windowed is so annoying when you have two monitors you can't really play without it.

Looking forward to try he multicore thing.

[Skinkelinke]

Nice post, Ive been going with the latency fix since it was annonunced somwhere back in TBC. Back then you needed to edit your registry manually though. Always lowered my MS by 50-100.

The processor thing was new to me though, gonna check that out

[Archz]

My world MS was lowered by 20-30 or so (on wifi), pretty neat! I only have two cores though